Discount travel website Alpharooms doubled its overall conversion rate, increased mobile conversion rate fourfold, reduced mobile bounce rate 35% and cut the time required for customers to price their itineraries by half. How? By rebuilding the site using responsive web design (RWD).

The impetus was the dramatic increase in mobile internet usage. Smartphones had come to comprise about 8% and tablets about 11% of Alpharooms’ traffic. These numbers were predicted to grow, but the brand’s conversion rates on these devices were poor. It was in response to these challenges that Alpharooms decided to launch its new multi-screen strategy.

It took 11 months to go from initial planning to migrating all traffic to the new RWD site, with several user journeys launched on a staggered basis during that timeframe. The RWD site responds to a user’s screen orientation and size, then adjusts images, content visibility and layouts accordingly.

The exercise resulted in improved usability on all devices. With a site that consumers can successfully use on any screen, Alpharooms today has greater confidence in marketing to mobile users, and AdWords enhanced campaigns is one tool that makes it straightforward to apply device-specific tactics. For example, the team can ratchet up the percentage bid adjustments to the mobile channel easily, as well as tailor messaging directly to consumers on smartphones.

In terms of future mobile strategy, the plan is to increase the bid adjustment and compete on all mobile channels. The marketing budget allocated to mobile is set to increase from just 1% to between 10 and 15%, in line with the brand’s steadily expanding mobile audience.

To learn more about Alpharooms’ RWD build, read the full case study here.

Article by Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Google

These days we're constantly connected, shifting from one device to another for communication, shopping and entertainment.

Our research revealed the average person in the UK has three connected devices while 90% of people move between devices to accomplish a goal. These 'sequential screeners' now expect a superb experience regardless of what they're using to browse on, whether PC, laptop, tablet, smartphone, hybrid device or television.

Businesses have an opportunity to increase engagement and drive conversions by creating a great user experience that serves consumers across all of these browsing options. To support your business in establishing a winning strategy, today we're launching a new initiative on Think Insights dedicated to making your website work across multiple devices.

Who uses multiple devices? What do they value when they search? How do people prefer to browse when they're using more than one screen? We tackle all of these in one infographic - which also explains three implementation options for developing your website to function at its best across multiple devices.

These new Think Insights pages provide links to loads of useful resources too. A testing tool helps businesses like yours to analyse website load speeds on mobile and desktop. We've also included examples of great multi-device strategies - read how PlusNet grew its sales on mobile tenfold. Baines & Ernst increased mobile conversions 51% and Towergate increase mobile visits 218%.

This launch aims to provide industry-leading best practices, case studies and tools to enable you to optimise your site across screens and devices.

Article by Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Google

We’re excited to announce the new Think Insights site in the UK. Think Insights is Google’s one-stop shop for marketing insights and inspiration for advertisers and agencies. On google.co.uk/think, you can read about the latest research in digital marketing, be inspired by creative brand campaigns, and find useful products and tools - all to help you make the most of the web.

We’ll feature content that spans industries and interests. Here’s an initial snapshot of some of the content available now:

• Get the lowdown on how Three created brand love & fame with #DancePonyDance

• Learn how to Make Your Website Work Across Devices with tips, case studies and an infographic
• See the ads that moved the audience the most in the YouTube Ads Leaderboards

If you always wanted to know about how consumers search your brand or what role social media in the customer journey plays head over to the Product & Tools section.

We built google.co.uk/think to help you do it all—stay up-to-date on the latest in digital marketing, arm yourself with data to support your business cases and create inspiring campaigns.

Article by Calvin Lau, Product Marketing Manager, EMEA

links and hastags: #thinkinsights #googlebusiness #google www.google.co.uk/think

This year lowcostholidays.com, a global online travel agent, wanted to drive awareness of their brand in new European markets. They turned to YouTube for innovative advertising options. ‘We wanted to reach our audience at a different stage of their research, particularly at the top funnel stage, and measure their engagement with our brand,’ explains Claire Goodenough, Marketing manager at lowcostholidays.com.

What did they do? They utilised two distinctive advertising options on YouTube: a bespoke TrueView ad and a Homepage Takeover. 

TrueView:

TrueView ads are pre-roll videos that run on content across YouTube. As the ad starts, the user is presented with a choice of skipping or watching the ad and advertisers are only charged when a user chooses to watch. Consequently users who choose to watch are likely to be more engaged.

The 30-second video that lowcostholidays.com produced was designed specifically for TrueView, in order to take advantage of the features that the ad format offers. In the opening few seconds, the ad invited the viewer to participate in a quiz to win a voucher code applicable to a future holiday. Once ‘hooked’ the viewer was then presented with a range of enticing holiday photographs, and at the end could guess the destination of the photos to win the discount. Annotations appeared throughout the video to encourage users to complete the quiz. lowcostholidays.com tested various targeting options and ensured they were targeting a relevant audience.

Homepage Takeover:

In addition, lowcostholidays.com ran a Masthead Lite on YouTube’s homepage for 24 hours in Ireland, affording massive reach in a concentrated time period. The ad unit consisted of an image banner as well as a video. Careful scheduling helped lowcostholidays.com maximize results. ‘We were able to pick what we deemed the most relevant day in terms of YouTube visits within our market and how it was aligned with our usual visitor behavior calendar,’ Claire explains. ‘Taking over the YouTube homepage for one day allowed us the broadest YouTube reach possible.’

Results:

An astonishing 80% of the Masthead’s traffic was from new visitors.  ‘This was our aim,’ explains Claire, ‘to get broader targeting and reach people who hadn’t heard of our brand before.’

The TrueView campaign also produced excellent outcomes. ‘Our initial objective was to drive brand awareness, which was achieved: our TrueView ad saw a much higher new visitor rate than we normally see,’ reports Claire. ‘Also, it was great that we achieved sales from TrueView at a CPA similar to some of our Search campaigns. Seeing conversions was certainly a bonus. The effort we put into targeting and making bespoke videos for TrueView paid off.’

Next steps:

lowcostholidays.com are extending their reach by testing engagement ads as well as Mobile Roadblocks. Claire adds, ‘after the success we’ve had with YouTube, it’s something we would definitely keep as a constant on our annual marketing plan’.

Click here to view the full case study 

Article by Anna Tong, Industry Manager for Travel

Baines & Ernst is a leading provider of debt solutions in the UK. In dealing in such a complex subject area, the company’s aim in terms of digital is to help users understand its products. And from all accounts, that’s something it seems to be doing better than ever, thanks to the launch of a new responsive web design (RWD) site. On mobiles, pages per visit have increased by 11%, average visit duration is up 30% and mobile bounce rate is down 8%. Most impressively though, mobile conversions are up by 51% since the RWD site’s debut.

When Baines & Ernst first grasped that mobile usage was on the rise, the decision was made to launch mobile-specific search advertising in late 2011, incorporating both sitelinks and click-to-call functionality. Positive results from this led Baines & Ernst to create a mobile-optimised site that launched in the second half of 2012.

While the additional site helped provide a better experience to growing numbers of mobile users, maintaining fresh content on both the desktop and mobile site proved to be an inefficient use of resource. Through testing and research, Baines & Ernst discovered a solution that would satisfy its goals. The main focus was to deliver a consistent user experience across all devices so potential customers could find the right information on any screen. The team initiated the build of an entirely new site incorporating the best practices of RWD.

Using RWD enabled Baines & Ernst to optimise its site experience across different screen sizes without creating multiple websites. By using flexible templates, CSS media queries and JavaScript events, the new RWD site responds to a user’s screen size and orientation, and then adjusts images, layouts and content visibility in accordance. It also harnesses novel device capabilities such as dragging, swiping and other gestures recognised by touch devices. All of this can be layered onto a single repository of HTML content, so while there’s only one content file to be maintained, it can be delivered across all devices.

Since most consumers lack deep familiarity with financial solutions, the company’s online presence is a critical tool for explaining Baines & Ernst products. As more and more consumers are researching these kinds of products away from their desktop computers, the move to an RWD site has proved a very savvy one. Read more of the Baines & Ernst RWD success story here.

Posted by Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Google

As a company covering more than 200 specialist insurance products for niche markets ranging from holiday homes to private helicopters, the array of information found on Towergate’s website is extensive. Because users need to access this content whenever and wherever suits them best, the company wanted to efficiently optimise site experience across all devices and screens. By adopting strategies to respond to the demands of a multi-screen world, Towergate boosted mobile visits by 218% and tablet visits by 236%.

Towergate’s first move was to rebuild its website using responsive web design (RWD). The result is a device-independent solution that caters for all and is well placed to embrace new smartphones, tablets and other web-enabled devices. The approach circumnavigates the need to maintain separate websites for various devices, offering a significant savings in time and resource.

In terms of digital marketing, Towergate’s goal is the same regardless of device – to drive a high volume of quality leads to the site, who in turn will to either buy online or make contact with a skilled advisor. Not long after the completion of Towergate Insurance’s new RWD site, the company upgraded all of its AdWords marketing to enhanced campaigns in the span of a single afternoon – in total around 150 campaigns across 15 different accounts – and can now make bid adjustments in the AdWords interface for mobile so that the appropriate Towergate ad is automatically served to the right user.

Thanks to the advanced reporting features in enhanced campaigns, Towergate can refine its efforts even further. Performance metrics have consequently made great strides forward. “The new site has given us more confidence to increase bids across all devices, which has led to improvements. Conversion rates tend to fluctuate seasonally, but in general visit to lead rates across the board are on the rise,” reveals Towergate’s PPC Manager, Keith Mowbray.

Read more about the multi-screen success of Towergate Insurance in the full case story here.

Article by Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Google

Most of us now have laptops at work, smartphones in our pockets and great looking tablets at our disposal and they can all answer nearly any question instantly. To better understand how the multi-screen revolution is changing everyday life, Google commissioned three global studies, each covering more than 35 countries: “The Connected Consumer Study” and “Mobile Purchase Journey” with TNS,  and “Our Mobile Planet” with Ipsos. These studies explore various aspects of multi-screen lifestyles: How many devices do people own? How do people use them together? How have these devices changed their lives?  Do consumers research and purchase differently across different devices? The answers lead to one conclusion: in Europe, the multi-screen world is here now and context is king.

Fast growth of connected device usage: Europe leads the way

The growth in usage of connected devices has grown spectacularly in the two years since Google first commissioned these studies. We all know laptops and desktops were already widespread across Europe, smartphone usage is growing fast and now tablet usage as well. Smartphone usage in the UK has more than doubled in two years, rising to 62%. Meanwhile, tablet usage tripled in the last year rising to 30% from 11% a year earlier. In nearly all the countries studied, people use more than one connected device. European countries like the UK, Norway and the Netherlands lead the way with people using, on average, at least three connected devices. In the United States, the average person uses 2.9 devices and the average in China is 1.4. In southern Europe, where internet usage is slightly lower than northern Europe, people use two or more connected devices. Globally, all countries are growing fast, and many have seen tablet usage double or even triple in the past year.

Be on the screen your customers are using

This explosive growth in multiple device usage has had a major impact on people’s lives. Nearly three quarters of British smartphone users go online with their mobile every day, 80% never leave home without it and 54% search the web from their mobile daily. People use their smartphone everywhere: 85% use it on the go, 71% at work and 72% specified they use them in stores. Two thirds of smartphone owners expect websites to work as well on their phone as on their desktop. So it’s imperative for every advertiser to ensure their website is designed to work across all devices.

Multi-screen buying

Sixty-one percent of smartphone owners use their phone for researching or purchasing products, and while 52% research products on their phone at home, many do so out of home as well: 25% do so on the go, 19% on public transport and 18% in a store. Peaks in mobile product research happen during lunch, just before the evening commute and after dinner.

The research process crosses devices, especially when research behaviour before purchase is intense. For instance, 93% of smartphone owners use their mobile, desktop or tablet to research travel products, while 70% use them to research technology products. While research behavior is different across product categories, it is very similar across devices:  price, quality information, reviews, ratings and location are common topics of research across all devices.

Research on smartphones affects purchases on mobile and elsewhere. For example after researching a travel product on the smartphone, 12% completed their purchase on the smartphone and 88% on the desktop/tablet or offline.  

Google recently launched enhanced campaigns to help advertisers reach consumers across devices in the moments that matter. Enhanced campaigns allow advertisers to easily serve ads across screens from one single campaign, which can be targeted across locations and time frames, for instance only serving ads near shops during opening times. And with the new ‘offer extensions’ feature, advertisers are able to give people close to their stores a special tailored offer, such as 10% off if used in the next 1 hour. To see the full value of ads targeted to mobile consumers, check out the Full Value of Mobile calculator, a new tool that provides measurement tips and benchmarks to understand mobile’s contribution to purchase decisions.

Take multi-screen action

Will you thrive in the multi-screen world? Here are some tips and tricks for success across screens:

• Check your site. Is it optimised for all devices? The web is speeding up, with the average UK site loading 14% faster than last year. Fast and optimised sites are better for users and businesses – find best practices, technical tips, common mistakes and many more insights on how to make your website work across multiple devices.

• Can consumers find you? Try searching from different devices and using generic and branded terms related to your product or service. Did your brand appear the way you want it to? Enhanced campaigns offer an easy way for advertisers to be present on all screens with minimal effort.

• Check the Full Value of Mobile calculator to assess how your mobile advertising drives store sales and cross-device purchases.

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Posted by Ali Turhan, Industry Analyst - Agency Strategy

Thanks to the fact that its new site is built on the principles of responsive web design (RWD), Plusnet has made serious gains in both usability and performance.  The provider of broadband and phone services has doubled traffic and boosted sales tenfold on smartphones and tablets. On these devices, visit duration and the number of pages viewed per visit have increased, while the time to complete a conversion has dropped 40%. Impressively, the new site is converting at a higher rate than the previous site converted on all devices.

Plusnet’s multi-screen strategy started to take shape back when the company saw that the number of users accessing its website through smartphones and tablets was growing significantly – by a percentage point every six months. The team’s decision to build a new site using RWD was based on the aim of improving user experience in a world where screens come in all shapes, sizes and contexts.

A device-independent solution that caters for all, RWD uses HTML5 and CSS3 features to optimise site experience. The creation of Plusnet’s new site entailed a complete overhaul of content. The team streamlined the customer sign-up journey so it now entails considerably fewer steps than before. Navigation and key offers move depending on screen size, while navigation collapses to ensure the most important content always takes priority. As a result, a customer can complete the entire purchase of an ISP or phone package on the site with ease, no matter the size of his or her screen.

Before the release of the RWD site, Plusnet didn’t have a mobile optimised site or strategy, and consequently had invested only minimally in mobile marketing. But with newfound confidence that smartphone users would get a great experience, Plusnet has turned its attention to the platform’s opportunities in paid search. The company has increased its mobile AdWords spend since launch and has used sitelinks and click-to-call functionality in ads too. 

All this adds up to a bright future for Plusnet – and one in which multi-device marketing plays a key role. Ideas currently on the drawing board include researching how to link multi-device users, an app to provide troubleshooting for broadband customers, and the implementation of AdWords enhanced campaigns, all supported by A/B and multi-variate testing to pave the way for further optimisations.

Read the full case study on Plusnet’s successful use of responsive web design here.

Posted by Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Google